This post is a continuation of reflections about The 100 Day Project. You can find more about the origins of the project and my first 25 days here. 

Around Day 25, the geese showed up. 

I’d been fighting it for a week. My husband would peer over my shoulder, look at the landscape I was painting, and say, “That meadow needs geese.” 

Part of his suggestion likely stemmed from the Canada geese that had taken over our neighborhood in February. They were everywhere--honking overhead, setting up camp in the field by our house. Sure, maybe I should capture that. But some of his suggestion was probably responding to the fact that my landscapes had gotten a little boring. 

In painting (unlike in life), I don’t really do realism. 

“I can’t paint a goose,” I told my husband. 

But then I remembered a lesson from an art-teacher friend: it’s all just lines and shapes. 

Geese are just shapes. I can paint an almond. I can paint a tiny black line and call it a neck. And another two for legs. I can paint a white fleck on the black line, and suddenly shapes become a goose. 

One of the unexpected things about this project has been the new internet-friends I’ve made. As the days have gone on, we’ve been each others’ cheerleaders, liking each new painting, commenting with observations, and encouraging one another to take breaks when we need them. 

“Some days I wonder if there’s value in painting the same thing over and over,” I confessed to one Instagram friend. 

She assured me there is, and sent me this great video, where artist Campbell Walker talks about being young and aimless, and taking a mentor’s advice to draw the same thing every single day for a year. 

He decided to draw an ibis every day--or, as they call them in Australia where he lives, a “bin chicken.” They’re big white birds with black heads. They eat trash. 

He drew one ibis. Then another. Then another. And then they started needing speech bubbles, making social commentary. After awhile, he realized that making comics with social commentary was the thing he was good at. The ibis were just a vehicle to get him there. Doing the same thing over and over again eventually leads you to the thing you’re supposed to be doing--a focused subject matter, your strength, your creative calling. 

Painting meadows led me to painting mountains and geese. But it may be that the thing I’m supposed to be doing is staying true to my original intention all along: just making time for myself. 

I confessed to another Instagram friend that I felt like I was hitting a wall around Day 40. 

“What’s your goal for the 100 day project?” she asked me. “Is it to get really good at meadows? To prove you can do it? To improve your acrylic skills?” 

“My goal was mostly to get some self-care time,” I said. 

“Then you’re winning.” 

I needed that reminder to recenter myself. Have I gotten better at painting meadows (and mountains, and geese)? Yes. Or at least I have my familiar patterns now. Pushing the paint in a certain way towards the mountaintops. Flicking with a particular brush to make grass. Building in the same tray of my palette so that all of the layers of green relate to one another instead of mixing a fresh hue. 

But in trying to decide what to do next (or scouting around for ways to keep it interesting), I forgot why I’m here in the first place. To sink into the silence. To lose time. To rest, to care for myself. 

Fifty days in, I am still seeing the value of this self-care time, but I’m also noticing where other things are falling through the cracks.

We have this idea that creativity begets creativity, but it turns out that time doesn’t beget time. Since I’ve begun devoting an hour or so a day to painting, it feels harder to churn out creative ideas in other areas of my life. I am writing less and taking fewer photos. In some ways, it feels like painting is scratching an itch, and the other creative processing I used to do is less necessary. But it could be, also, that I just have less time. When I’m showing up for painting, I’m not showing up for reading or writing. 

I saw a comic not too long ago that was a woman telling herself, “You don’t have to be productive in a pandemic!” but in the background her brain said, “But that’s for other people. That doesn’t apply to you,” and she said, “No, not to me.” 

If I’m honest with myself, I did start this 100 day project in part because I wanted to create something big and meaningful in a year where everything feels meaningless. But mostly it was my hope that I’d look up from this project and find myself in a different world. One where my friends and family were vaccinated, where I felt safe spending time with people again.

This project has carried me through the dark, tedious days of winter. But these  past weeks of spring, I spent entire days outdoors, letting my daughter wander around and explore nature. My siblings have been vaccinated and are finally getting to meet the baby. I had a vaccinated friend over for dinner. I’m tentatively planning summer travel. 

Fifty some-odd days ago, when I sat down to paint, every day felt the same. Work, childcare, meals, chores. Painting was a way to claim an hour for myself. But now, days begin to have more variety. A spontaneous evening walk. A dinner guest. Outdoor art exhibits popping up all over the city.

The pandemic isn’t over, but winter is. And the feeling of things shifting, of the different world emerging, happened more quickly than I thought. 

I will always need to take time for self care. But self care also looks like time spent on a blanket in a field in the sun. A long evening of catching up with a friend. A rainy afternoon with a book. 

So at day 50, I’m bringing my project to a close. I got what I needed. I survived the winter and arrived in these early days of our different world. I’m excited to paint other subjects (and maybe even other meadows!), but maybe just one day a week. 

Spending fifty days painting made me contemplate so much about being human when I thought I couldn’t possibly grapple with anything else. Fifty days of ambition and doubt. Ritual and routine. Balance and time. Creativity and boredom and trial and error and expression and silence. And it gave me something to look forward to each day during a period when nothing else was on the horizon. 

Were I to continue, I think this project would start to morph into prioritizing painting instead of prioritizing myself. The thing that felt like an escape has begun to feel like an obligation. And that’s how I know it’s time to break the rules (that never were) and bring things to a close. 

If you’d like to scroll through the evolution of meadows from days 1-50, you can find them here. More on starting your own 100 Day (or 50 day!) project here. And if you’re in the middle of any ritual, pattern, or project (even a self-improvement one!), I’d invite you to spend some time considering how you will know when you’ve gotten what you needed.  

The geese have continued their migration elsewhere, and now it is spring. I’m going to go outside.